Colonel Brandon had a bad day yesterday.

Colonel Brandon had a bad day yesterday, but not as bad as I did... although for the same reasons.

He went to the vet for a biopsy yesterday, and they had to put him under to do it. My seven year old puppy is not the friendliest guy to begin with - oh, he wags his tail and he smiles that goofy underbitey doggie grin of his, but he's just trying to lull you into a false sense of security, trust me - and he really gets cranky when he's sedated. Also, he's not terribly fond of the head Vet (the one who does surgeries), and seems to prefer the secondary, lady vet.

I suspect part of that is he's just not fond of men (other than Captain) in general, also head Vet tends to come at him with sharp pokey things and do unspeakable things to his hind end.

Anyway, Captain dropped Colonel Brandon off between PT and morning formation, and I had given him instructions written on a napkin (don't ask) to mention to the vet people - CB's distemper shot was due next month, could we get it now? Also, he's got sores/irritated spots on his tummy/hind end that we think are allergy related but we want to confirm this, can you take a look?.

I was not expecting to hear anything until that afternoon when Captain went to pick CB up, but then my phone rang around eleven.

Of course, it was the head Vet. CB's pre-anesthesia bloodwork had come up slightly wonky and that coupled with the tummy spots could be a severe allergy reaction or it could be symptoms of Cushing's Disease.

Head Vet wanted to know if I would be willing to authorize additional bloodwork.

Apparently, there is some long involved test they can do to try to narrow down if it is Cushing's a bit, but that test is about $250 and he doesn't like to recommend doing it until after they do some more general bloodwork to rule out other things like diabetes or some other stuff I completely blanked on because my brain was suddenly focused on the words "Cushing's Disease" and "secondary effects could be fatal" so... yeah.

Obviously, I gave him the authorization to do the general bloodwork, with the understanding that if needed we would bring him back in for the more specific stuff later after we got the results from the first round and also the biopsy.

Which I'd almost managed to forget about in the OMG a Disease?! panic.

It will be a week before we get the results from the biopsy, and while we hope (fingers crossed) that it's just a benign cyst like the last one he had in the same area, this cyst/tumor/whatever had a huge growth spurt recently and that's never a particularly good sign. So, me being the worst case scenario sort of girl, Captain and I have already had a discussion about what to do IF the worst results come in, because cancer is a very serious thing and just because you can keep your doggie alive a few extra months does not mean you should if he's suffering... Which makes me sound heartless, and I'm not about to run out and have him put to sleep without hearing all the options first, and it probably isn't even cancer but I can't help worrying because that's the kind of mommy I am...

So, obviously, yesterday was a bit rough for me.

But Colonel Brandon seemed to have come out of it relatively unscathed. He's got some stitches, but he appears to be leaving them alone for now, so no Cone of Shame.

We did not receive any reports that he'd bitten anyone, always a good thing. Although he did give one of the vet assistants the eye when she went to leash him so Captain could bring him home and he ended up having to be restrained in a slightly different manner that did not involve getting close enough to get bitten, just to be on the safe side. Apparently to get him from one area to the other, they told him he he was going home so they could put his leash on him but they were just putting him in a cage, and he was Not Pleased, hence the evil eye later.

He was a little out of it when he came home, we think. At one point he got distracted by the light reflections from the outside wind chime and forgot he was in the middle of eating and just stood there staring at the wall, watching the pretty lights.

Colonel Brandon had a bad day yesterday.

Colonel Brandon had a bad day yesterday, but not as bad as I did... although for the same reasons.

He went to the vet for a biopsy yesterday, and they had to put him under to do it. My seven year old puppy is not the friendliest guy to begin with - oh, he wags his tail and he smiles that goofy underbitey doggie grin of his, but he's just trying to lull you into a false sense of security, trust me - and he really gets cranky when he's sedated. Also, he's not terribly fond of the head Vet (the one who does surgeries), and seems to prefer the secondary, lady vet.

I suspect part of that is he's just not fond of men (other than Captain) in general, also head Vet tends to come at him with sharp pokey things and do unspeakable things to his hind end.

Anyway, Captain dropped Colonel Brandon off between PT and morning formation, and I had given him instructions written on a napkin (don't ask) to mention to the vet people - CB's distemper shot was due next month, could we get it now? Also, he's got sores/irritated spots on his tummy/hind end that we think are allergy related but we want to confirm this, can you take a look?.

I was not expecting to hear anything until that afternoon when Captain went to pick CB up, but then my phone rang around eleven.

Of course, it was the head Vet. CB's pre-anesthesia bloodwork had come up slightly wonky and that coupled with the tummy spots could be a severe allergy reaction or it could be symptoms of Cushing's Disease.

Head Vet wanted to know if I would be willing to authorize additional bloodwork.

Apparently, there is some long involved test they can do to try to narrow down if it is Cushing's a bit, but that test is about $250 and he doesn't like to recommend doing it until after they do some more general bloodwork to rule out other things like diabetes or some other stuff I completely blanked on because my brain was suddenly focused on the words "Cushing's Disease" and "secondary effects could be fatal" so... yeah.

Obviously, I gave him the authorization to do the general bloodwork, with the understanding that if needed we would bring him back in for the more specific stuff later after we got the results from the first round and also the biopsy.

Which I'd almost managed to forget about in the OMG a Disease?! panic.

It will be a week before we get the results from the biopsy, and while we hope (fingers crossed) that it's just a benign cyst like the last one he had in the same area, this cyst/tumor/whatever had a huge growth spurt recently and that's never a particularly good sign. So, me being the worst case scenario sort of girl, Captain and I have already had a discussion about what to do IF the worst results come in, because cancer is a very serious thing and just because you can keep your doggie alive a few extra months does not mean you should if he's suffering... Which makes me sound heartless, and I'm not about to run out and have him put to sleep without hearing all the options first, and it probably isn't even cancer but I can't help worrying because that's the kind of mommy I am...

So, obviously, yesterday was a bit rough for me.

But Colonel Brandon seemed to have come out of it relatively unscathed. He's got some stitches, but he appears to be leaving them alone for now, so no Cone of Shame.

We did not receive any reports that he'd bitten anyone, always a good thing. Although he did give one of the vet assistants the eye when she went to leash him so Captain could bring him home and he ended up having to be restrained in a slightly different manner that did not involve getting close enough to get bitten, just to be on the safe side. Apparently to get him from one area to the other, they told him he he was going home so they could put his leash on him but they were just putting him in a cage, and he was Not Pleased, hence the evil eye later.

He was a little out of it when he came home, we think. At one point he got distracted by the light reflections from the outside wind chime and forgot he was in the middle of eating and just stood there staring at the wall, watching the pretty lights.